Abstract
IN different periods, America and Australia shared the distinction of being both formal colonies and areas of recent settlement.1 From the imposition of the Navigation Acts in the 1660s — whereby American trade was directed and American manufactures were discouraged — to at least the revolutionary wars of 1775–8, the economic development of the new world was conditioned by isolation, migration, resource endowments and external trading relations, as was that of Australia throughout most of the nineteenth century.
Like the transplant of any tissue, the organic structures of science may well be rejected by inappropriate hosts.
Charles Rosenberg, 1974
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Notes
For the standard definition see p. 369 of John E. Sawyer, ‘The Social Basis of the American System of Manufacturing’, Journal of Economic History, 14 (1954), pp. 361–79.
Nathan Rosenberg, Technology and American Economic Growth (New York, 1972); Russell I. Fries, ‘British Response to the American System: The Case of the Small Arms Industry after 1850’, Technology and Culture, 16 (1975), pp. 377–403.
Paul Uselding, ‘Elisha K. Root, Forging and the American System’, Technology and Culture, 15 (1974), pp. 543–68
Ibid., see also, for specific techniques, Rosenberg, ‘Technological Change in the Machine Tool Industry 1840–1910’, Journal of Economic History, 23 (1963), pp. 414–43
R. S. Woodbury, ‘The Legend of Eli Whitney and Interchangeable Parts’, Technology and Culture, 1 (1960), pp. 225–53
For a sophisticated approach see Oliver E. Williamson, ‘The Modern Corporation: Origins, Evolution, Attributes’, Journal of Economic Literature, 19 (1981), pp. 1537–68, esp. pp. 1553–57.
Jim Hightower, ‘Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times: Failure of the Land Grant College Complex’, Society, 10 (1972), pp. 10–1, 16-22.
L. S. Reich, ‘Research, Patents, and the Struggle to Control Radio: A Study of Big Business and the Uses of Industrial Research’, Business History Review, 51 (1977), pp. 208–35
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© 1991 Ian Inkster
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Inkster, I. (1991). Centre and Periphery: Science and Technology in America and Australia. In: Science and Technology in History. Themes in Comparative History. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21339-9_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21339-9_10
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